Dick Cheney

Cover Stories of the People in Charge

Vice President Dick Cheney was in the White House during the attack.
He said he learned of the attack from a clerical secretary.

Interestingly, Cheney, in an interview with Tim Russert on NBC,
indicated that the President made the decision that day
to scramble fighter jets. This is very unusual, as it is contrary to
standard operating procedures, and raises the question of whether
and why the President delayed the scrambling of jets.
Here is the text of Vice President Cheney's comments on NBC:
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Tim Russert: "What's the most important decision you think he
(President Bush) made during the course of the day?"
VP Cheney: "Well, the, I suppose the toughest decision was
this question of whether or not we would intercept
incoming commercial aircraft ...
We decided to do it."

Here Cheney cleverly attempts to confuse the listener
into thinking that "intercept" means "shoot down".
In fact the
routine procedure of interception
consists of flying fighter jets to within close proximity
to the off-course aircraft, and attempting to make visual contact
with whoever is in the cockpit.

As the attack unfolded, news reports stated that Cheney had been whisked
to a secret and secure location --
later revealed to be the
Presidential Emergency Operating Center
in the basement of the White House.
Cheney was with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice,
directing the response to the attack.
Or was he directing the attack?
The testimony of Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta
is suggestive in this regard.

MR. HAMILTON: We thank you for that. I wanted to focus just a moment on
the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part
of the day. I think you were there with the vice president.
And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president,
that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were
suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there
when that order was given?

MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time
that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man
who had come in and said to the vice president,
"The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out."
And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out,"
the young man also said to the vice president,
"Do the orders still stand?"
And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said,
"Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?"
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Hamilton indicates that "the orders" were to shoot down commercial aircraft.
But Mineta's account makes more sense if "the orders" were not to shoot
down any such aircraft.
The repeated questioning of Cheney by the junior officer whether
"the orders still stand" had to be about whether the order
NOT to destroy them still stood.
Given the two prior attacks against the Twin Towers using
the commercial airliners as weapons,
an order to destroy the plane approaching the Pentagon
would be the only order to give and would not be subject to question
by a junior officer as the plane approached.
Furthermore, had Cheney's order been to fire on the plane
approaching the Pentagon (which first came near the White House),
the anti-missile anti-aircraft capacity of the Pentagon (or White House),
would have sufficed to take out that plane,
and certainly to have attempted to take out that plane.
Neither occurred, and since Mineta does not speak
of a last-second change by Cheney,
the only supportable conclusion is that Cheney's order
was NOT to defend the Pentagon,
an order so contrary to both common sense and military defense that it,
and it alone, explains the repeated questioning by the junior officer.
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